


A Species of Violence

by sinuous_curve



Series: A Concept By Which You Measure [8]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: D/s, M/M, Non Consensual, Rape Fantasy, Rape Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 13:18:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Clint takes one of his back ways down to the lab, because it’s what he would do if he <i>could not</i> allow himself to be seen. There’s a certain importance that the ritualisms have; he knows that from dozens of nondescript hotel rooms with a target’s name and a time and location where he would find them, and take them. The almost funny thing is that Clint’s fairly certain the other Avengers haven’t quite made the cognitive leap between knowing he and Nat were assassins and really thinking about what that means. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Species of Violence

**Author's Note:**

> So, this actually spun out of the fact that locketofyourhair had a noncon square on her kink_bingo card. What started as discussion of how Bruce copes with his demons evolved into this. It's spiritually connected to her works (Reaching Out and Skid Right Into a Fall on her DW), which are really lovely in their own right.

The first week Clint actually lived in the tower -- which he does distinguish from the couple months he spent there in the immediate aftermath of New York -- he scoured his floor from top to bottom. He got up in the ductwork and figured out how to get from his level to the roof and basement without having to touch the floor. He even found a little alcove not on the blueprints to set up some of his, and Nat’s, failsafe protocols in.

Tactical advantages aside, it also means Clint can get down to the laboratory sublevels without being seen. It helps, obviously, that Tony’s mired in an official Stark Industries conference call with their Japanese arm, and that Steve reliably spends the same hour and a half in the gym every day. He half suspects Jarvis can’t really see him either, but that’s not something Clint has a lot of desire to test. 

He’s not really thinking he wants a guardian angel or conscience or whatever the hell Jarvis is watching this. 

Clint takes one of his back ways down to the lab, because it’s what he would do if he _could not_ allow himself to be seen. There’s a certain importance that the ritualisms have; he knows that from dozens of nondescript hotel rooms with a target’s name and a time and location where he would find them, and take them. The almost funny thing is that Clint’s fairly certain the other Avengers haven’t quite made the cognitive leap between knowing he and Nat were assassins and really thinking about what that means. 

Except Bruce. Bruce gets what that means.

Clint slips onto the lab sublevel with his heart beating heavily, but steady, against his ribs. He always thinks of it as some last, latent shreds of normality telling him that he has to turn around if he doesn’t want to give that all up entirely. Clint ignores it, keeping close to the wall with his head ducked down for the cameras. Old habits never die, not when they’ve kept you alive. 

Granted, this isn’t life or death, not really. It’s him and Bruce, and this thing that they do to keep the monsters at bay. Their monsters are big enough that it takes significantly more extreme measures than most people would understand. Clint believes that on an intellectual level, and his gut tells him it’s true, too. And he knows he has permission for this. He made Bruce spell out his yes very clearly, because there is always that danger of becoming the thing you’re trying to fight. 

There are failsafes and backups, too. They’ve talked about those until Bruce hesitantly touched the tips of his fingers to Clint’s elbow and said, “I’ve got it. I understand. I promise.”

Still.

The outer door of Bruce’s complex of labs only has the most basic security protocols on it. Clint holds his face up to an eyescan, sees a bright flash of blue light, and then the lock disengages with a soft click. Clint slips through and closes the door firmly behind him. He taps the engage button the back side panel and the lock, along with a series of reinforced bolts, engages with a more solid thud.

The inner door is set in a glass wall, frosted on the bottom and clear on the top. Clint can just see Bruce sitting at one of the tables in his main work space, hand curled lightly around his neck as he reads something on his laptop. One of nails is black all the way through from their last fight and a punch that crushed the steel girder of a skyscraper. He’s got a couple small, spattered burns. 

“You know better than that,” Clint murmurs, pressing his palm to the scanner set in the second door. It flashes green, and he’s prompted for a password and then a ten digit number code. Clint taps it in and the door eases open with a soft hiss of compressed air. He slips silently inside. 

Bruce’s lab sounds almost alive, with the lights buzzing quietly overhead and whatever the fuck gigantic pieces of lab equipment he’s using humming and clicking in their own little language. Clint does not even come close to getting the same soothing ease from this place that Bruce does, but. Their thing started here, and Clint is appreciative for that alone. He closes the door and punches in the series of failsafe codes Bruce told Tony to give him. Tony did, frowning and asking questions Clint refused to answer all the while. 

Even Bruce does know the failsafe codes. They’re an anti-Hulk desperation measure, designed to keep the big guy contained for as long as possible so counterforce can be scrambled. Clint has his doubts it would actually work against the Hulk. But Bruce? Isn’t going anywhere.

The rubber soles of Clint’s boots are silent as he eases toward Bruce. His back’s to Clint, but he’s sunk down into the oblivious science place where his brain moves about a thousand miles faster than anyone else can come close to. He’s got his glasses folded on the table beside him, next to an old, empty mug of coffee. Open on his laptop is what looks like an in progress article, with a slew of red comment bubbles down the side. 

He and Tony are working on some project with caustic materials and how they react to different metals -- both theoretically interesting, according to them both, and practical in terms of Tony’s latest modifications for the next mark of his suit. Bruce listened to them babble over each other during their explanation, rubbing his knuckles and thinking about what caustic chemicals have done to Bruce’s skin. When his hand has slipped. 

Like on his knuckles right now, Clint thinks, skimming his eyes over the bright red spatters. Bruce has his hands clasped under his chin as he reads. The angle makes the overhead light burn the marks a much brighter, more raw red than they really hard. Clint feels the muscle in his jaw tighten up. He feels himself slip sideways. 

There’s a certain sharpness that comes from being the mental space that he needs for this. When he first joined SHIELD and was learning how to take the raw, unsteady anger he already had and channel it into something exquisite and horrifying and productive, someone told him that you can’t about torture in terms of the repercussions it will have for the person underneath your hands. You have to think about it as an exercise in a skill you have.

That still is what started this thing; that, and Clint’s ability to recognize something familiar in Bruce. Clint can spin the start as practicality, because no one wants Bruce walking around with acidic green eyes and tension roiling off him so it looks like every flex of musculature is the shift taking over. 

But _this_ is just as much, or more, about Clint. It’s a paradigm shift.

Maybe six feet behind Bruce, the reality of that change brings Clint up a little short in a swell of doubt that fills up his chest and presses into the all the empty spaces inside him. He knows they won’t be able to go back from this. A little voice in the back of his mind says they’ve never really had the option of going back, not since Clint went down into Bruce’s lab and said, “I get why you do it. I don’t get it doesn’t make you hulk out.” Even if it had been left there, it would have been a secret shared. 

Clint is so very _good_ at providing Bruce with the things he needs. This elides with that, but. There’s no practicality here, not like what they usually do. Where everything else, starting with the way Bruce gets hard from punches that leave bruises and ending with the way Clint can’t seem to stop watching him, stems from that first need. This is more intimate. 

Bruce doesn’t notice Clint close the last couple feet between them. He types a few words on his laptop, and deletes one of the red bubbles on the side of the screen. Clint’s eyes skim over the words, but it’s so thick with science-ese it passes through him without even really leaving an impression. He settles his gaze at the dark curl of hair on the nape of Bruce’s neck.

“I’m going to hurt you,” Clint says clearly, and before Bruce has a chance to react Clint is already in motion.

He grabs Bruce at the nape of his neck with his fingers digging into the solid bone of Bruce’s skull. Clint’s momentum propels Bruce forward, so he can fist his other hand in the back of Bruce’s shirt between his shoulder blades. Clint’s got the height over Bruce, and the better leverage, and it is fucking _easy_ to yank Bruce out of his wheeled chair.

The chair goes shooting backwards, wheels squealing over the tile floor until it crashes into another table and goes over. 

Bruce’s reaction is beautiful, the shocked way his hands flail outward and bang against the edge of the metal table as he goes down and the shocked cry that sounds torn from the very bottom of his lungs where his iron will fails and all the demons scratching at the wall wait and hide. He hits the floor awkward on his knees, propelled sideways by Clint’s hands and his own momentum.

He lets out a cry when his knees slams against the hard floor and Clint’s belly kicks with that low, savage heat that he finds in these moments. He was also told, back before he knew what he was doing, that you can’t be good at this if you don’t enjoy it. Clint is good, he knows that. Clint never has nightmares about what he’s done. He has dreams.

Clint’s grip keeps Bruce from sprawling onto the floor, and the push of his arms and legs helps a little with that, too. Another day, Clint decides with a calm, clarity that settles over him and turns the world sharp and bright, he’s going to shove Bruce into the floor with his hands behind his back. That thought curls Clint’s mouth in a sharp smile, and he hauls Bruce up and shoves him forward against the table.

Clint is stronger than he looks. Bruce hits the table with an audible, juddering clang of metal as his palms skid against the slick surface. 

Bruce’s pelvis slams against the sharp metal side of the table and the force bends him sweetly in half. The tail of his shirt yanks out from his pants as his breath explodes out of his lungs in a rushed, painful whuff of air. Even so, his occasional training sessions with Steve are paying off because he reacts with action before he reacts to the pain, making a commendable effort to twist around and gain a better footing. 

Clint doesn’t give him the opportunity. He shoves himself up along the length of Bruce’s back, kicking his legs open wider. “Don’t fucking move,” Clint says, in the calm, steady voice that has made other people cry. They want him to sound angry when he’s like this, but it’s not anger. It’s so far from anger that Clint can’t find a logical follow through there. Bruce is still struggling for air, pinioning between the press of Clint’s weight and table like it’s going to get him anywhere. 

It’s not.

From his back pocket Clint pulls out a pair of metal handcuffs, made from some alloy Tony discovered and promptly outfitted every member of SHIELD with, in deference to the wide array of people, hybrids, and creatures they arrest. Clint slaps one onto Bruce’s wrist, locking it tight enough that he can see the indent into Bruce’s skin. The other does around the the leg of the table. Bruce yanks against it instinctively, and nothing gives. 

Clint fists a hand in Bruce’s hair and jerks his head backward. Bruce’s spine bows against the force and he lets out a low, pained noise. His cuffed hand is curled into a fist that can’t do anything, but there’s no green on his skin. His eyes are deep, dark brown as they look at Clint, angry and frightened on the surface and sunk down into the castle-in-the-clouds calm beneath that. 

“I’m going to hurt you,” Clint tells him, and kisses him hard. He bits Bruce’s bottom lip, then slams Bruce’s face down onto the unyielding table. Bruce cries out again, flailing forward with his free hand and finding nothing but the opposite edge of the table to hold onto.

Clint can see the harsh, gasp rise and fall of Bruce’s ribs as he rubs his hand up and down Bruce’s spine, as though he’s feeling a piece of meat. Bruce’s muscle jerk and twitch at his touch, flinching away from Clint’s hands. Clint skids his palm up Bruce’s spin and circles his hand around the nape of his neck again. “I said don’t move.”

With his other hand, he shoves up Bruce’s button down and undershirt. It’s been a couple weeks since their last team engagement, and he’s filled out from the skeletal look he tends to get post-Hulk. The shift takes a truly fucking ridiculous amount of energy; Bruce once explained to him how much and Clint absorbed almost none of the science, but remembers the quiet, closed off look on his face and the fact that he wrote all his diagrams, consciously or not, in green pen.

“I’m going to hurt you,” Clint repeats. He drags his nails slowly down the length of Bruce’s spine. His skin flares of bright red in four distinct, parallel lines. Half a second later, the lines bead with bright red little pinpricks of blood. Clint’s belly kicks with heat. Bruce is visibly shaking, trying to hold himself still and failing.

Clint presses himself along Bruce’s back, dragging his nails around Bruce’s hip. His trousers are old, soft from the wash and almost fragile for how long Bruce has been wearing them. Clint palms at Bruce’s dick, feels how godawful fucking hard he is, and squeezes. Bruce grunts at the touch, then groans and jerks back when Clint doesn’t let go. “I said I was going to hurt you,” Clint says, biting at the solid muscle’s that go down his back. “Don’t fucking move.”

Bruce isn’t wearing a belt, which makes popping his fly open all the easier. Clint yanks his zipper down with a soft snick of metal teeth unfurling and pushes his hand past Bruce’s fly to squeeze his cock through the thinner fabric of his boxers. Bruce makes a sound that can only really be called keening, pitched high and whining from pain. 

If Clint had any doubt that this was what he wanted, it bleeds away. 

He pushes himself back upright and shoves Bruce’s trousers and boxers down in a series of rough tugs that trap his cock and make his hips twist and try to shy away. Clint gets them down to Bruce’s knees, and drags his nails back up. The same bright, swollen red lines shiver up the back of Bruce’s thigh and his his ass to the small of back. They bead up with blood, too, bright red and accusatory and painful and beautiful. 

“You can scream,” Clint says. His hand is still on the nape of Bruce’s neck. He’ll probably feel the strain in the morning, but all he feels right now is his blood in his veins and knife-sharp clarity. “No can hear you. No one’s going to stop me.”

The sound Clint’s belt makes when he yanks it out of the loops makes Bruce jerk again. It’s an old nightmare sound for them both, that exists in the old ugly days of their childhood, where their memories shrink down to the dimness of hiding beneath a bed with your hands pressed over your ears. That’s another monster, Clint thinks viciously, throwing his belt away to clatter against a table and fall to the floor. Bruce struggles so hard the cuff around his wrist rattles against the table. Clint laughs, low and hard and sharp. 

He pops the fly on his jeans and eases the zipper down. It’s quiet enough in the lab that the sound grows and mutates into something loud, oppressive and final. Bruce twists, but he’s caught between the table and Clint and neither of them are going to give. Clint tightens his hand around Bruce’s neck and pushes down even harder. He trails his gaze over the scarred topography of Bruce’s back. He’s so pale, from the bunched hem of his shirt stretched over his ribs to the waist of his pants around his thighs. Pale, scarred up; he looks fragile. 

Clint knows exactly how much force it takes to leave a bruise, and how deep you have to cut to leave a scar. 

He shoves down his jeans one handed, then reaches into his underwear and pulls out his cock. “I’m going to fuck you,” Clint says, jacking himself a couple times. “You can’t stop me.”

They’ve never done this before, not in all the months Clint has been blindfolding Bruce, tying him down, and hurting him. Knives, whips, even a fucking cattleprod are easier than the prospect of this. Clint doesn’t have another context for them, just the want that’s settled like an ache in the pit of his belly and a bone deep belief that he knows what he’s doing. Bruce is shivering and shaking beneath his hands, just like he should be. 

Clint spits into his hand and slicks up his cock with nothing more than that. This has to push past rough, going into the place where Bruce asks to be hurt and where Clint can be the monster he pretends he isn’t. He drags the head of his cock along the crease of Bruce’s ass, and gets a sweet, broken, scared little sob. Bruce’s hand strains against the cuff, but the other’s still white knuckled around the far edge of the table. 

“I’m not going to stop,” Clint says, answering the question that Bruce hasn’t asked, and wouldn’t. In all the thing they’ve done, Bruce has never asked him to stop. He just watches with that gut deep need in his eyes, until that elides with the sink down into the place where nothing can touch him. He’s twisted up, watching Clint as best he can over his shoulder with Clint holding him in place. There’s something similar between how he looks how and how he looked tied down to a chair with hot wax dripping onto his chest.

Clint shoves inside him.

The way Bruce’s spine bows says that it hurts. The noise that gutters out of his throat says that it hurts. The way his hand skitters over the table against the cuff says that it _hurts_. He’s tight and unyielding around Clint, unwilling and maybe unable to give an inch as Clint pushes brutally into him. They come together with an audible slap of skin, hard and awful and bruising. Perfect. 

“No, God, _please_ ,” Bruce gasps. 

He always says no, and please. Clint doesn’t give a chance to adjust or adapt, and he doesn’t care about making Bruce’s body relax in inches. He pulls out and slams back in, and it almost hurts him a little, too, for how wound tight and unwillingly Bruce’s body is. Bruce’s hips jar forward against the table and he grunts, squeezing his eyes closed and shoving his face down toward the table.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Clint sets up a rhythm that barely deserves the name for how hard and frantic he fucks Bruce, digging his fingers into Bruce’s skin at his neck and hip. The table rocks beneath the force of it, clattering and groaning. Bruce’s body is wound tight as piano wire. His breath comes in short, sharp gasps punctuated by lower, base sounds that are really nothing other than sobs. He sounds like he’s breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, and Clint bends down to bite him again. Bruce should always sounds like that. 

His focus narrows in so tightly on Bruce it’s almost a surprise when he feels orgasm coming up in raw, red crash against his nerves. The blood from the claw marks on Bruce’s back has smeared between them in red streak and there are bruises already beginning to bloom purple on his skin. 

“No, no, no,” Bruce sobs, and that sends Clint over the edge. 

He comes buried as deep inside Bruce as he can get, digging his fingers into Bruce’s skin so hard that Bruce lifts his hips and head up the scant inch he can from the table. Bruces spin bows and twists, contorting in ways it shouldn’t be able to. There’s no green on his skin, just his flesh and bruises and blood, and all the weapons they have between them to keep everything at bay. 

It’s -- so much better than Clint imagined it would be. 

While Clint is shivering through the aftershocks of his orgasm, he bends over along the length of Bruce’s back and closes his eyes for a few seconds. He can feel Bruce’s ribs moving up and down, the slick of blood and sweat between them. The hand Clint uses to skim over Bruce’s hip and palm at his cock feels mildly disconnected from his body. He cups Brace’s balls in his hand, jerks on them a couple times just because he can. Bruce is soft, and sticky with his own come. 

“You --” Clint’s voice comes out jagged around the edges. He swallows. “You okay?”

There are a few breathless heartbeats where Bruce says nothing, and the seeds of panic plant themselves in Clint’s chest. Then he uncurls his hand from the edge of the table, drags it jerkily down, and grabs Clint’s hand. He squeezes. 

“That _hurt_ ,” he says softly. Then, “Thank you.”


End file.
